The Midweek Maxi #2 - Winning Streaks, Klopp vs Tierney, PGMOL, and Paul's My Day at the Match

Our new Liverpool FC weekly compendium. News. Stats. Views. Debate. Links. Data. Insights. Delights.

New feature!

To read about why we’ve replaced Free Friday with The Midweek Maxi, see the intro to the first edition.

This week:

• Excerpts and links to the different pieces we've published across the TTT Substack network, prior to the paywall kicking in;

• Then, my own My Day at the Match last night, including seeing a Liverpool Anfield penalty in the flesh, and analysis of the game as well as the 5-hour journey home via traffic cone hell;

• Next, Andrew Beasley's weekly statistical insight on a subject, this time on the weird way Liverpool get fewer different refs across a season than other clubs (and as such, get stuck with the same numpties – my word, not his);

• Then, some of the best comments from the site this past week;

• Next, Daniel Zambartas’ bumper LFC News, Media & Transfer Round-Up;

• A bit of Midweek Moby (the TTT stalwart, not the beautiful bald middle-aged man);

• And then finally, a blast from the TTT archives.

Job done! (Oh, and it’s also a discussion thread for the issues raised.)

Note: the Maxi may exceed the email size limit on Substack, but the whole piece can be read online by paying subscribers.

TTT Network Roundup

Links and excerpts to articles on the various TTT sites, which are run by different people and require separate subscriptions to this, the TTT Main Hub.

TTT Main Hub

After the last gasp victory over Tottenham and the subsequent fall out with Klopp and his post-match comments about referee Paul Tierney, the in-depth analysis this week was about the strange frequency that he seems to be involved in the Reds’ matches over the past few years.

Paul Tierney Refereeing Liverpool – Just the (Grim) Facts [FREE READ]

This past weekend, Tierney broke the record from recent years when officiating Liverpool for a 7th (SEVENTH) league game this season; no ref had ever done a single team more than six times in a season in the past five years (and there were only three other instances of that), with data collected by Andrew Beasley; even in the Covid seasons, when refs stayed local, for exceptional circumstances. (Kevin Friend did Norwich seven times that season, but that was the only other example of a ref doing the same club seven times in a single season.)

Otherwise, five times is almost always the most any ref will do any team, across 38 games, and the average is just over two games per ref per club.

You might expect to get a high-status ref more often near the end of the season in a title run-in, but even then, it would never take the number of appearances above six.

So, Tierney's seven from 33 games is a massive outlier.

There is clearly an increasing paranoia about officiating by all fans, in an era of conspiracy theories; and so often they seem so bad they feel corrupt. But it’s usually much simpler than that.

It’s really hard to talk about a subject like this without people assuming you’re a conspiracy theorist. Which is why I turn to data. (Even so, there will be a biased reaction to this from those biased against Liverpool FC.)

I analyse tons and tons of refereeing data, that builds up every year, and from this I have 'exonerated' someone like Mancunian (why are so many of the refs Mancunian?) Anthony Taylor as being a bad ref for Liverpool, in that his data on Big Decisions seems fairly balanced; even if people remember the travesty of Vincent Kompany not being sent off by a Mancunian ref in Manchester in a decisive title-race game.

Overall, Taylor gives Liverpool only a fraction fewer Big Decisions than against my Expected Big Decisions model.

(Big Decision = penalty, straight red card and 2nd yellow card. More on Expected Big Decisions later in the piece, which factors in team quality.)

Of course there was the staple diet of TTT as well, the bumper post-match analysis and debate between subscribers analysing the game.

Liverpool vs. Tottenham: *Bumper* Post-Match Analysis

The 'peak-end rule' is also a big winner today: you remember the peaks of an experience, but often overriding the peaks are the final moments of how something ends.

The last 75 minutes saw Liverpool create almost nothing, but then the peak-end rule switched from prize cock Richarlison – chicken dance and all – to Diogo Jota slamming home an even later goal a few seconds later.

Have that, and then some.

The first 15 minutes provided plenty to cheer, as did minute 94. Otherwise, a few concerns to discuss.

It felt like losing 3-0, to be 3-0 up and then pegged back to 3-3.

But that's the order of the goals for you, and the peak-end rule. And also a strange sense where we can't fully enjoy things right now, even with a fourth win on the spin.

The way the Reds slowed down, and then made mistakes, fed into one another, and there were some men in red who had torrid times. Yet it’s worth remembering that this is another win, and not a defeat or a draw that felt like a defeat. This is the joy of the late, late, late winner, as seen against Newcastle earlier in the season, at home.

The bad centred mainly around Andy Robertson spending 95 minutes giving Spurs the ball.

I think it's about as bad as I've seen anyone in possession, albeit I said that about him earlier in the season. Apart from a few 5-yard passes, I'm not sure he found a red shirt.

Then, Virgil van Dijk showed again that the pace that he referenced in an interview in today's Sunday Times (as if he still had said pace) was absent again.

At least he admitted his form has been patchy, but the turbocharger looks gone. And for the second game in a row he cleared off the line, but the inability to go toe-to-toe with attackers is totally obvious now.

And even though Liverpool could have had two more penalties (Paul Tierney gave a stonewaller – still no marginal calls), Ibrahima Konaté could also have been penalised for grabbing Richarlison; although as Mo Salah can be grabbed with impunity, it's perhaps a good job that it wasn't Sir Harold Harry Good Old Boy Kane on the end of it, who would have been given two penalties.

Jürgen Klopp, having twanged a hammy in celebrating the winner, again confronted Tierney at the end, who in the last two Anfield games gave his first Liverpool penalties in 25 fixtures; but still managed to ignore some terrible tackles on Liverpool players, as well as penalising Mo Salah for brushing off a player holding his shirt.

The Transfer Hub

Mizgan’s detailed scouting report this week looked at a potential replacement for Fabinho, the young Sporting Lisbon destroyer Manuel Ugarte who has been linked with the Reds in recent weeks.

Manuel Ugarte - Scouting Report on Fabinho's Potential Replacement

Ugarte - Comparison with top Premier League DMs

This section has Ugarte’s numbers of the current season, compared with some of the top defensive midfielders in the Premier League. We have Moisés Caicedo, who is also a Liverpool target.

Rodri and Thomas Partey have been top this season. Fabinho’s numbers of last season are included because he was good then and we would want balance in the comparison table.

Dynasty

On Dynasty we had the next instalment of a major new series looking at the dawn of Roy Evans’ tenure.

Originally a series of articles covering the period 1992 to Klopp’s arrival in 2017, it was written by TTT Subscriber Anthony Stanley, serialised on The Tomkins Times and then published by TTT as a book called A BANQUET WITHOUT WINE - A Quarter-Century of Liverpool FC in the Premier League Era.

A Quarter of a Century of Liverpool FC in the Premier League Era, 1992-2017, Part 3

But none of this is to exempt the Liverpool players of blame. There is a direct correlation with on-field frustrations – and there were plenty – and lurid front page tabloid headlines. Despite there being more than a whiff of exaggeration about the whole ‘Spice Boy’ phenomenon, a phrase that was originally coined by the Daily Mail and seized on by paragons of apparent virtue everywhere, there are some facts that cannot be argued with. Rumours, counter-arguments and dubious claims by former players are one thing but there was serendipity about the developments within and without the Liverpool squad that didn’t help those who protested that it was nonsense. Rob Jones – soon to be struck down by a career-ending injury – became close friends with Robbie Williams, just before the singer left the boy band Take That. As a result, Williams ended up getting invited onto the team bus for a trip to Aston Villa. The singer, now battling alcoholism, drug addiction and weight gain following his split from the band, also accompanied a group of players which included John Barnes on an end of season jaunt to Magaluf. Jamie Redknapp – seen by many as the epitome of the Spice Boys moniker, a player who underachieved due to off the pitch excess (not that this is the case) – started dating Louise Nurding, a singer in the girl band Eternal, in 1996. 

There were pictures all over the tabloids of Robbie Fowler out with Emma Bunton, also known as Baby Spice. Jason McAteer started dating lad’s mag favourite Donna Air, and the less said about that advert the better. David James was frequently jetting off to the cat walks of Milan to model underwear. All of this contributed to a general sense that the Liverpool players’ priorities were not what they should be. Of course, it didn’t help that Fowler and Redknapp would later sustain debilitating injuries, curtailing their time on the pitch and adding to the overall impression. The latter told Simon Hughes that ‘It progressed quicker than anyone could comprehend, when you consider players were having beers and fish and chips on the bus after games just a few years earlier.’

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